Saturday, 27 March 2010

We have just taken stock of a new range of wet felting kits from GillianGladRag. There is a basic felt making kit in a rather smart cotton drawstring bag, and contains everything you need to start making felt (except for soap, water and elbow grease!)

Unlike some other kits, this kit contains a long triple woven bamboo mat (60cm x 160cm) specially designed for feltmaking by Gillian, which makes the process faster and easier and with top results! It is big and long enough to make most felty things, - including scarves.

The beginner's felt making kit includes:

1) A 100g rainbow bag of merino wool tops (fleece) with all the colours of the rainbow plus black and white and a few others, - just to get you started. There are also lots of other wool inspiration packs to buy in this shop which you can add to your order afterwards. (Exact colours may vary slightly from the picture.)

4) Full clear illustrated instructions for making simple flat pieces of felt. (These are water resistant in case you get them wet!).

There are a variety of kits available to make some smashing smaller projects such as bags, bunting and bangles, most of the kits need the Basic Kit for the wet felting. Below are some of the kits that we are stocking.

The "Tea on the Lawn" Felt Tea Cosy Kit

The "Ickle-Pickle" Fairy Basket Felt Bag Kit

Burlesque Betty Felt Bag Kit

The Plum Pudding Felt Rose Corsage Kit

The kits are designed by Gillian Harris who after a successful graphic design career in TV moved into textiles and in particular felt making. She runs fel making courses and her book "Complete Feltmaking" was published in 2006.

Tuesday, 23 March 2010

We now have the latest book from Kaffe Fassett (with Liza Prior Lucy) Kaffe Fassett's Simple Shapes Spectacular Quilts available. In Simple Shapes Spectacular Quilts, world-renowned quilter Kaffe Fassett demonstrates how basic geometric forms—squares, rectangles, triangles, diamonds, circles, and quarter-circles—found in natural and manmade environments inspire his quilt designs. Twenty-three of his magnificent, inventive quilts—ranging from the relatively simple Tilt, ideal for beginners, to the more complex Circle of Stars, for more advanced stitchers—are showcased in the book, along with step-by-step instructions for making each one.
Along the way, Fassett also offers over a hundred photos of geometric inspiration from around the world—everything from triangular watermelon slices, to rectangular sheets of metal on African scrap dwellings, to lollipop-shaped topiary trees in Japan. In the accompanying text, Fassett reveals how he experiences the colors and basic shapes around him, how we can train our own eyes to see this rewarding source of creativity, and how we can, just as he does, combine striking fabrics with simple shapes to create our own spectacular quilt designs.